Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past

The Body of the 25th of April: Provocation, Dramatization and Catharsis of Memory in Cinema

José Filipe Costa — 2024-11-25

In a specific type of documentary, the goal is often to engage participants' senses by involving them in physical, vocal, and collective activities. This method can elicit powerful physical and emotional memories. In my film Prazer, Camaradas! (2019), scenes in which the protagonists wash clothes in a communal tank or participate in a cooperative assembly facilitate a process of memory recall or retrieval that may challenge perceptions of a particular era. Following the Carnation Revolution, filmmakers such as António de Macedo in Candidinha ou a Ocupação de Um Atelier de Alta-Costura (1975) and José Nascimento in Pela Razão Que Têm (1976) adopted similar techniques. I prefer to describe this evocation of memory as a dramatization rather than a reconstitution. In this approach, actors do not just imitate past behaviors or depict events as they occurred; instead, they bring the present into dialogue with the past through their bodies and voices.

Music, Art, Science and the Decolonisation of History. Roundtable on Sanjay Seth’s Beyond Reason: Postcolonial Theory and the Social Sciences (2021)

Sanjay Seth — 2024-11-25

To disseminate the stimulating discussion that took place in May 2023 as part of the Immaterial Festival in Évora, Práticas da História presents the debate from the conference "Music, Art, Science and the Decolonization of History". The session was moderated by Luís Trindade (University of Coimbra) and featured a lecture by historian Sanjay Seth (Goldsmiths College, University of London). Following the lecture, interventions were made by musicologist João Pedro Cachopo (researcher at CESEM / NOVA FCSH – IN2PAST) and art historian Mariana Pinto dos Santos (researcher at IHA / NOVA FCSH – IN2PAST).

The public will find a series of reflections that Seth, prompted by Luís Trindade (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), shared based on his book Beyond Reason: Postcolonial Theory and the Social Sciences. His discussion focused on the codes of History and how the discipline can learn from art and music, and vice versa.

In his lecture, Seth highlights the various ways of understanding what can be investigated in each respective area, with Cachopo and Santos engaging in dialogue during their interventions. These discussions revolve around conceptions of the past that establish parameters for evaluating time, what is alive or not, and what is part of the present or has potentially ceased to exist.

On Decolonising Revolution through a Lens of Afterlives

Alice Wilson — 2024-11-25

What do calls for decolonisation in postcolonial times offer to analysis of revolution? This article brings contemporary calls for decolonisation into conversation with scholarship on revolution. Taking inspiration from studies that question Enlightenment-centric paradigms of revolution, this article also understands decolonisation in postcolonial times as a project that contests ongoing colonial hierarchies, including violence, and retrieves the agencies that colonialist approaches neglect. Attending to these forms of decolonisation, first, the article outlines scholarship that decolonises ways of thinking about revolution, as a means of bringing visibility to those endeavours. Second, noting how this scholarship has prioritised events during or preceding revolution, the article extends inquiry temporally to address afterlives as a lens for decolonising revolution – and examines these possibilities through ethnographic work on the afterlives of revolutions that met with overwhelming repression, in Oman and beyond. Third, the article considers practical implications of decolonising analyses of revolutions and their afterlives.

Revolution in 1672? On the Philosophy of a Disproportion in History

Thomas van Binsbergen — 2024-11-25

In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was at the forefront of modernity, though not quite modern yet. The disproportion concerned a crisis that would burst out in 1672: a crisis of the bourgeoisie, the protagonist of modernity. Following Antonio Negri, Baruch Spinoza is the philosopher who was able to go beyond the crisis from within. After all, Spinoza is a thinker of immanent production and liberation, the thinker of the multitude. However, the critical year of 1672 remains in the shadows of Spinoza’s and Negri’s work. Both seem to consider 1672 under a certain ambiguity. It is precisely this ambiguity that we will trace in order to advance the philosophy of crisis and multitude. By understanding 1672, we will be able to orient ourselves better in modernity, together with Spinoza and Negri. This essay brings us back in the disproportion of history: revolution.

Revolution as Beginning and Liberation. Georg Forster and Frantz Fanon – a Cross-Reading

Manuela Ribeiro Sanches — 2024-11-25

The aim of this text is to propose a cross-reading of some revolutionary writings by Georg Forster (1754-1794) and Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), emphasising how both contributed to a reflection on the theory and the practice of the Revolution. The affinities of their exilic experiences will be considered, as well as the way in which the concept of revolution they drew on presents important overlaps, namely as regards the understanding of it as an inaugural, necessarily violent moment, as a stage inherent to a process of liberation. This proposed juxtaposition aims at offering a less Eurocentric, more oblique, perspective on revolutionary processes, while also implicitly addressing the challenges of our contemporaneity.

Navigating “Revolution” in Henri Lefebvre’s Literary Corpus: An Academic Inquiry with Relevance to Contemporary Political Dynamics

Francesco Biagi — 2024-11-25

This article aims to rediscover and analyze overlooked works by Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) that demonstrate his engagement with historical analysis, challenging stereotypes that confine him to urban or cultural studies. His work addresses the intertwined issues of “revolution” and “history” within 20th-century Marxist debate. The first section explores Lefebvre’s concept of “revolution” within critical urban theory and the theory of everyday life. The second section delves into his anti-determinist, anti-historicist approach to history within Marxist discourse. The third section examines his “progressive-regressive” method, tracing its roots in Marx and Engels’ thought, and its value for historical analysis and contemporary uses of the past. Ultimately, this article highlights Lefebvre’s significant contribution to rethinking the concept of “revolution” and its enduring implications.

Is This a Utopia? Maybe It Is a Programme: Work, Social Subject and Utopia in André Gorz’s Political Thought

José Nuno Matos — 2024-11-25

Over the last few decades, the dichotomous relationship between the ideas of reform and revolution has become increasingly unbalanced, with the latter becoming an almost anachronistic and, at best, utopian term. André Gorz was one of the theorists who stood out most for his intellectual and political resistance to this trend, problematizing these concepts without, however, abandoning a way out of capitalism. Based on his work published from the mid-1960s until his death in 2007, the aim of this research is to analyse the political programs designed to achieve this end. The article aims to understand the objective and subjective conditions of these strategies, namely labour relations; the set of measures contemplated; and the social subject constituent of and constituted by such changes.

The Vincennes Event and the Afterlife of May 68 in the Pedagogical Thought of Deleuze and Rancière

Tomás Vallera — 2024-11-25

We propose an analysis of May 68 and of its afterlife in the pedagogical reflections of two thinkers who were able to transform the initial stimuli of revolutionary criticism into a creative power. Like the rebellious students, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière questioned the outdated and impoverished higher education of their time. We highlight their common crossing point, the Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes (Paris VIII), an institution created by the government in the aftermath of the insurrection which became known as an “anti-Sorbonne”, where research was cultivated in small groups and within an unprecedented multidisciplinary framework. It was there that Deleuze experienced his transformation as an educator, developing a musical conception of teaching. It was in Vincennes, finally, that Rancière began to tread his path of intellectual emancipation, culminating in the radical notion that thought is an exercise that presupposes equality to reach difference, dispensing any tutors or mediators.

The Retornados in the Portuguese Political Discourse: The Case of the Solemn Parliamentary Commemorations of 25 April (1977–2023)

Morgane Delaunay — 2024-11-25

This article examines the way in which the repatriated population from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa is integrated into the speeches delivered during the solemn parliamentary commemorations of the Carnation Revolution. Based on a systematic analysis of the speeches of all the Portuguese political actors who took part in the commemorations of 25 April, from 1977, the date of the first session to be organised, until 2023, the aim of this article is to determine whether some periods stand out in terms of the frequency with which the former settlers are mentioned, and whether some political actors stand out from their peers in raising these issues. It also seeks to understand whether the emergence or disappearance of political actors over the years has influenced the way in which the issue of the retornados has been addressed during the parliamentary commemorations.

Putting the Revolution in Place – The Democracy’s Politics of Memory through the “Monuments to April 25th"

Gil Gonçalves — 2024-11-25

This article proposes a reflection on the memory policies of democratic Portugal by mapping and analysing the ‘monuments to the 25^th of April’. The transformations of the first years of democracy resonated in public art, which began to celebrate figures, episodes and values that, for years, could only be evoked in private. Focussing on the sculptural evocations of the Revolution, we aim to identify the moments when they were erected, their geographical distribution, the spaces they occupy, their promoters and both the symbols and meanings they inscribe in the public space. From this general analysis, we move on to four case studies that are significant in terms of the trends, controversies and silences that characterise these tributes. These monuments constitute a privileged observatory of the disputes over the collective memory of democracy, serving, on the one hand, as strategies for fixing and normalising a certain idea of the Revolution and, on the other, as counter-narratives that resist official discourses.

Dissent in the Historical Narrative: The Carnation Revolution in Colossal Youth (Juventude em marcha, 2006) and the Coup of 11 March 1975 in Horse Money (Cavalo dinheiro, 2014)

Patrícia Sequeira Brás — 2024-11-25

In this article, I intend to analyze the way in which the dominant discourses about recent events in Portuguese history, specifically the 25 April 1974 and the 11 March 1975, are questioned in two films by Pedro Costa: Colossal Youth (2006) and Horse Money (2014), respectively. In addition to the discursive elements, the essay also proposes an analysis of the formal procedures in Costa's two films through which the consensual narrative of the 25 April and the Revolutionary Process in Course (PREC), as well as their emancipatory discourse, are questioned. It is concluded that both films suggest that other stories are yet to be actualised, calling into question the consensus of the historical narrative and, in this way, generating dissent; thus preventing the crystallization of the emancipatory narrative of the historical event and the subsequent revolutionary period.

The Dangers of History: Another Culture of Violence in Benue and Plateau States, Central Nigeria

Samaila Suleiman — 2024-11-25

How do competing historical narratives authorize or sanction violence? The central argument of this article is that the mobilization of historical narratives, whether popular, amateur or academic history, constitutes another form of violence that is far from the concerns of students of conflict in Central Nigeria. Based on oral interviews and a critical study of reports of government commissions, ethnic memoranda and propaganda leaflets, collected during fieldwork in Benue and Plateau states, Central Nigeria, the article examines the ways in which the extra-textual and meaning-assigning agency of history is weaponized as an instrument of negotiation and political violence. The article examines the various discourses around the Sokoto Jihad and the history wars among competing ethnic groups in Benue and Plateau states. The study is located within critical work that is attuned to the salience of symbolism in understanding the capacity of vengeful historical discourses to inflame violence.

Revolutions and their afterlives

José Neves — 2024-11-25

Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman

Francisco Freire — 2024-11-25

Review of Alice Wilson. Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023, 312 pp.

The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule

João Pedro Oliveira — 2024-11-25

Review of Audrey Truschke. The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021, 351 pp.